Thursday, November 16, 2006

In view of the recent racial attack in the UK and an open display of racism on ANTM, I have decided to postpone my latest episode of "Discover!". So let's talk about racism today.

RaceDefinition:The distinguishing of one population of an animal species (e.g. humans) from another of the same subspecies.

Racism is bred out of one of Man's very basic instinct: fear. In the words of Yoda, "Fear leads to anger; Anger leads to hate; Hate leads to suffering" These words have never been more relevant. Why would people have the fear of different races in the first place? The answer lies in upbringing.

I'm sure many of you Chinese kids in Singapore have experienced your mothers or grandmothers telling you "The ah-bu-neh-neh (Hokkien slang for an Indian man) will take you away if you don't stop crying!" or something along those lines when you were much younger. When you're a kid, the only influence you get is from your parents and care-takers, so it is inevitable that they'd plant seeds of racial fear by their wrong choices of expression.

What I'm trying to say is, racism is a vicious cycle. It happens when children are told to fear and in turn, hate people who are different from them. It's a problem that starts from young and can be addressed if we wanted to.

Other than the genes that determine our differences in physical appearances, we are all the same human beings. Unless we're willing to put aside our differences and embrace what we have in common, our world will continue being plagued with the unnecessary hatred.

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PS - For those who're wondering what happened during ANTM on Wed, Jaeda faced an incredibly racist Spanish male model during their first filming of a commercial in Spain. She had to kiss him for the shoot and this is what happened before the filming began: